Limitations of OEM Mandated Automotive PPC

Automotive PPC | Car Dealer Digital Advertising

As a full service digital marketing agency, one of our core focuses is in automotive SEM. We are constantly amazed when we run across dealers that are utilizing OEM mandated automotive PPC companies because they can save a couple thousand dollars a month that is co-oped by the manufacturer. When we have taken a Pepsi challenge against these vendors, we are able to show the dealer that spending a bit more to help sell more cars is actually a better ROI on dollars to dollars spent comparison!

Why Are Some OEM Co-Op vendors costing dealers money?

You might be surprised to hear this, but OEM’s do not select approved vendors for recommendation because they are the best option. Vendors that make it onto an approved co-op list make it there because they fit more of the OEM needs than other vendors. What are the criteria the OEM’s are looking at when they select vendors to approve for co-op money?

Can the vendor scale quickly?

Does the vendor have experience with advertising for the brand?

Can the vendor provide a significantly reduced cost to the OEM?

Will the advertising strategy be consistently administered across all dealers?

If you notice there isn’t a discussion about local markets, customized campaigns or ongoing changes to the strategy and platform.

This is where things often break down for dealers that are utilizing OEM mandated or recommended co-oped vendors. The ability to scale, the consistent strategy, and the reduced price the vendor has to offer all add up to one big problem for dealers. These vendors don’t want to customize the strategy at all. They are built to add as many dealers as possible and crank them out on the same templated strategy as everyone else.

Do you think most dealers want to be utilizing the same exact strategy as every other dealer? Of course not. Dealerships do everything in their power to stand out from the crowd. They thrive by being bold, different, and aggressive. Their digital marketing strategy will not be able to match their core advertising strategy because they are forced to utilize the vanilla strategy offered by the approved OEM SEM vendor.

Would You Rather Save Money Or Sell More Cars?

This is the ultimate goal for your dealership? We hope it’s to sell more cars! What if I told you that if you spent $2K more with us per month than you do with your OEM co-oped PPC vendor, you would get more qualified leads and sell twice as many cars? Would that make you think twice about saving the $2K to sell let’s say 10 more cars per month?

Some dealers just don’t get it and they don’t want to. They see that the OEM vendor can save them some money and they are happy with that savings. They don’t want to look deeply into what they are getting and what they are LOSING by saving that money. Our challenge is to try to show these dealers how to spend their money in a targeted strategic way that is right for their dealership. To utilize local specific tactics that incorporate the things that make them unique into their selling proposition.

We work in an industry where providing bleeding edge technology such as automated used car marketing software and highly aggressive new car PPC campaigns makes your company a “boutique” firm. It should be the industry standard to do the best job possible with the resources and technology available to us, but it’s not! The industry standard is how many of the same exact boring hamburgers can we crank out to keep things consistent and cheap.